Prof A P Balachandran, In Memoriam

Prof A P Balachandran, Joel Dorman Steele Emeritus Professor of Syracuse University, passed away on 18th April, 2025, at Coimbatore. He is an internationally recognised theretical physicist.

Early life and Education: He was born in Salem and had his schooling in Cochin, Kerala. After finishing his Inter at Guruvayurappan college at Calicut, he went on to do his BSc(Hons) from Madras Christian College and later his PhD from Madras University under Prof Alladi Ramakrishnan. He was also the first graduate student of MATSCIENCE now known as the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc). He went to the Theoretical Physics Institute, Wien (Vienna) and Enrico Fermi Institute (Chicago) for Post doctoral work.

Career: He joined as faculty at Syracuse University in 1964 and continued there till his retirement. He played a key role in making Syracuse a thriving research center and an attractive destination for Physicists from all over the world, especially from India.

He has been deeply associated with all the major Universities and Research centers in India and is a regular visitor to give lectures and interact with scientists. He has been invited to all the top ranking research centers, Universities in the world.

Awards: He obtained several recognitions for his research works. Notably, the Award of the American Chapter of the Indian Physics Association for Contributions to Physics, 1992, The William Wasserstrom Award for Graduate Teaching, 1991, Chancellor's Citation for Exceptional Academic Achievement, 1990, and Fellow of the American Physical Society since 1988.

Summary of his research work: His major work is in reviving Skyrme model and describing baryons as topological solitons of meson fields. He has used the mathematical concepts of topology and differential geometry to understand the structure of gauge theories which are the paradigm underlying the so-called Standard Model, our current and best theory of the interactions of elementary particles. In particular, his work focused on Quantum Chromodynamics, the part of the Standard Model pertaining to nuclear forces. He also worked on the quantum physics of noncommutative geometries and axiomatic field theories. He was very active till the end and continued to publish research works on highly reputed journals.

He is the author of more than seven books and monographs on quantum field theory, group theory and Hopf algebra with applications to quantum physics. He has also contributed more than 200 publications and has graduated nearly 40 students from all over the world.

Other interests: He was deeply interested in Marxism and Scientific thoughts and an active participant in several action programs like anti Vietnam war movement, Iraq war and many other issues in the United States.

If you wish to add your thoughts or memories of meetings with Bal, you can do so on the google-sheet here: Google Sheet

You may also wish to join us virtually at the Bal Memorial Meeting to be held at The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, on Thursday, April 24 2025, 16:00 - 17:00:

Zoom Link Meeting ID: 934 1029 5362 Passcode: 550083

A P Balachandran's Picture collection Link: Gallery